Long story short, I found a DVD-R recording of this show and, needing some background noise while I did other stuff, popped it in. And yes, it’s a Smackdown PPV in late-2004, which means this is smack dab in the middle of the John Bradshaw Layfield WWE Championship reign. And he’s defending the title in a four-way against Booker T, Undertaker, and Eddie Guerrero. Well, I can’t imagine reacting positively to this back in the day, but it’s been close to a couple decades. Maybe I mellowed out a bit.
Category: Wrestling PPV Musings
WWE TLC 2020
“I’M LAUGHING BECAUSE THE FIEND IS BURNT
TO A FUCKING CRISP! THAT’S FUNNY!”
Vincent Verhei
Bryan & Vinny Show
December 21, 2020
Welp, here we are. The TLC show from the WWE Thunderdome featuring Bray Wyatt being burnt to a fucking crisp… and yes, the Fiend still sucked.
Why did I decide to watch this show after skipping it the first time around? That’s a very good question and as soon as I can come up with a very good answer, I will let you know. In the meantime, it’s Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt THE FIEND in a Firehouse Inferno match, which is basically an inferno match in the THUNDERDOME where everything is in a monitor and we do video tricks and shit like that…
Other stuff happened, I guess.
WCW Halloween Havoc 1996
Halloween Havoc was World Championship Wrestling’s signature October PPV event before the name was adopted into a special episode of NXT that would play around this time. I’ve only dabbled in a few of these PPVs and never did bother to make these a tradition on the blog… and a few have wondered why that’s never the case. Well, the plain and simple answer is that none of these Halloween Havoc shows were actually any good and even some of the better shows were simply a matter of being “less bad” than the usual stock. Sure, there was some good stuff – usually on the first half of the card – but the bad stuff was generally very bad and offset the few highlights on these shows.
With that having been said, since I’ve been on the WCW 1996 PPV kick during the summer, I might as well cover that year’s Halloween Havoc PPV, which I have never seen. Fall Brawl closed out with a significant push forward in the nWo saga, with Sting out of the picture and the nWo running roughshod. Our main event for the show is Hogan vs. Savage.
WCW Fall Brawl 1996
(Yeah, we’re shuffling the Musings a bit here. Today and tomorrow gets one and next week gets none. Things will be back to normal here in a couple weeks, promise.)
Yeah, we’re going back to the WCW 1996 PPV well… mostly because I want to do a musings on that year’s Halloween Havoc. To the best of my recollection, this was the first WCW PPV I actually watched back in the day… and yeah, that was a thing.
WWE Extreme Rules 2022
Believe it or not, kids, this is another WWE modern PPV musings and on a Monday rather than the usual Wednesday slot. Meanwhile, I have still yet to watch the past two AEW PPV events. Are the tides turning and I’m slowing veering back to the land of McSon-In-Law? Stay tuned for further developments as they happen, but for now, let’s dip into this Extreme Rules PPV, which wasn’t a total dumpster fire.
TNA Destination X 2005
Well, we did Against All Odds 2005, which is a show that I have on commercial DVD… and coincidentally enough, I also have Destination X, which was the following month’s PPV offering from Total NonStop Action TNA Impact Zone Wrestling. So, it seems only fair that we give that one a shot and then maybe next week, we’ll go watch some random WWE show from the same year because sure, why not?
Much like the previous show, this is a 2-disc set where they basically split the PPV into two discs and there’s very little in terms of worthwhile special features.
TNA Against All Odds 2005
So, we’re doing something different… or at least, something that could’ve been done ages ago if there was any sense. We’re looking at a TNA PPV from 2005, but rather than look at a show from the Impact PLUS service, it’s a VINTAGE TNA Home Video on DVD release from around that time.
It’s Against All Odds 2005 – featuring the main event of NWA World Champion Jeff Jarrett defending the title against Kevin Nash of all people. Oh boy, I’m excited.
(Turns out that I already did this show three years ago… fuck it, we’re going to do it again today, but if you want the original rant for comparison, there you go.)
TNA Turning Point 2004
The second ever monthly TNA PPV is known for two things; it’s the last TNA appearance of Macho Man Randy Savage, who would fuck off soon afterwards… and I really can’t blame him, really. And the other thing is for showing footage of that one time TNA wrestlers went over to visit some WWE guys who were shooting a commercial for an upcoming PPV at Universal Studios, which is where TNA was holding all their shows at that point.
Just to get it out of the way, they teased the airing of the footage by having a couple guys do bad impersonations of Vince McMahon and Triple H trying to stop TNA from airing said footage and being total fools of. This was making light of the fact that WWE actually did have a problem with TNA possibly showing this footage on their programming. And once they showed the footage, almost all the WWE guys’ faces were blurred out so you couldn’t tell them apart unless you paid attention to their tattoos. It all came across as really lame – about as lame as any time you saw AEW take a cheap shot at WWE these days.
Now that we got that out of the way, let’s check out the rest of this Turning Point PPV.
TNA Victory Road 2004
We’re going to be sampling some TNA shows for the next few weeks and what better way to kick this run off than by going back to their very first monthly PPV?
TNA’s new Impact television show had just debuted on FOX Sports channel as a weekly late-night television show; not exactly prime time but a step in the right direction for the promotion. And with that in place, TNA stepped away from the weekly PPV experiment that had been a money loser for the most part to transition to the traditional monthly PPV formula, beginning with this Victory Road show.
I’m going into this blind, as I am largely unfamiliar with this period in TNA history. I’m assuming Jeff Jarrett is the champion here because he almost always was… anyway, I’ll try to keep an open mind and watch the show as it happens.
WWE Clash At The Castle 2022
It was a big weekend of wrestling. One night featured the AEW All Out PPV, while the other night featured WWE’s Clash At The Castle show from Wales. Prevailing circumstances prevented me from catching the AEW show, but I was able to watch the WWE PPV and so I’d figure that I would share my thoughts here.
We’re about a month or so removed from HHH’s stint as the new head of WWE Creative and there has been some changes here and there. A bunch of guys who were released have been brought back, there’s more of a focus on wrestling, and people are even allowed to say wrestling and hospital. It’s not exactly a huge turnaround and it’s still going to be a while before we can properly gauge this a success, but it’s steps in the right direction.
So I’m going to give this relatively minor show that’s being treated like a big deal a fair shake. And if turns out good, who knows? I might start watching these WWE PPVs again when they happen. Otherwise, I’ll be more than content waiting until the new year to give this another shot.
dtm666 